KHSAA comes down on LexCath...

Sivart and I have had extensive discussions about the whole public vs. private school debate in high school athletics, but the KHSAA just came down on one of the main schools in question recently.

Lexington Catholic High School is having to pay thousands of dollars in fines and the football and baseball teams are being sanctioned among other things and they are going to have to forfiet some wins.

Anyway, all of that aside, when it comes down to it, if the KHSAA comes down on these schools so that they don't have to split up everything, will these schools really have anything to worry about?

Early on when LexCath decided to bolster its athletic programs in order to draw in more students, then maybe they could have improperly helped out some student athletes to get the ball rolling. But right now their reputation should be all they need. I'm sure they make a ton of money from athletics. Our local high school girls team is there as we speak fixing to take on another private school in the biggest girls' basketball tournament in the state. You WKU Lady Topper fans know of Sacred Heart.

It's kind of mind boggling how LexCath had to, for lack of a better word, cheat a little bit in order to get some kids into the school. LexCath is an athletic mecca in this state. And I can't see how the KHSAA is going to fix the public vs. private school problem. I can see how the private schools dominate the state championship title counts, but I'm afraid of how things might shake up.

And there are other problems out there too. If they split up the public and private schools, how can they leave the Louisville area wide open? If you live in Louisville, you can go to any school you want as long as you can get a ride. I don't know how it is in other cities, but Louisville and cities like it have a built in advantage there.

At least in Owensboro you have to pay a little bit extra to go to a school out of the district where you live. It's not much but at least that gives people some incentive to stay close to home and not move kids around.

It's a crazy situation because there is not a good way to fix it. Sure you want the public schools to have a shot at winning more often, but can you sanction the private schools and hinder their money making abilities?

Santa Claus is coming to town.

Disclaimer: At this time of year, most sports columnists will write their typical Christmas column that involves the columnist playing Santa and giving sports individuals gifts for the coming year or writing about their wishlists for the sporting world. I have always thought these columns were a little, what’s the word, lame. That being said, because I am a sports columnist I am obligated to do this type of column, plus I am pretty excited about it.

Tis the season for giving gifts, but more importantly for receiving gifts. For most of us, this means receiving gifts from Santa Claus. I began to think about the current sporting landscape and thought to myself, “If I were Santa, what would I give…?” If I were Santa this year, these are the gifts I would give.

To Ron Artest: I would give Ron Artest a nice spa retreat to a lovely mental hospital of his choosing. In addition to that I would give him a sense of gratitude. Gratitude for the way the Indiana Pacers stuck by this guy even as he became a villain and the epitome of everything that is wrong with the NBA. If he is traded, I hope that he enjoys playing for a team that is more likely to lose 55 games than compete in the NBA Finals.

To all the players in the NBA: I would give every player in the NBA uniform shorts so long that the waist would be at their chins and the shorts would still drag the court. I would also allow the players one day a week to wear whatever they wanted to on the court. This would of course be casual Friday.

To Donovan McNabb: I give Mr. McNabb two straight weeks of peace. There will be no attacks on his leadership, no attacks on his health, no attacks on his skill, and no attacks on his blackness. I still have not figured out how McNabb has become the bad guy in this whole Terrell Owens mess. I may not think much of TO’s agent Drew Rosenhaus, but his publicist is awesome. It would seem that all of Philadelphia is now on TO’s side, including teammates. I am sure Donovan is just as confused about this turn of events as I am.

To the Indianapolis Colts: I give to you the gift of an undefeated season in 2005. What’s that? Oh, sorry about that. This was one I really wanted to give. I am getting a little tired of the 1972 Miami Dolphins popping the champagne and celebrating every time the last undefeated team of the NFL season gets beat. They are like a traveling band of buzzkillers that takes pleasure in the dashed dreams of others. So to the Colts I will give you a consolation gift, a Super Bowl victory.

To Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa: A nice quick, quiet retirement. Have a nice life.

To the Cleveland Indians: To the Cleveland Indians I give a World Series championship in 2006. That’s right, 2006 is your year. The last two champions have been teams that have gone the second (Chicago White Sox) and third (Boston Red Sox) longest period without a World Series championship. The Cleveland Indians are the next in line. Sorry Cubs fans, recent history shows us that your team will never win another World Series.

To UK football coach Rich Brooks: Well, you already got your present from UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart when he decided to bring you back for one more season. Enjoy your year because it will probably be your last.

To UK coach Tubby Smith: I give you patience from at least one person in the state. I also give you realistic goals for this season. I will only expect a 28 win season and a Final Four finish instead of a 30 win season and a championship. I will give you a break this year.

To U o L coach Rick Pitino: I give you forgiveness from your constituents for losing the big one. I, on the other hand, applaud you for it.

To Randolph Morris: I give you, Randolph, appreciation. Appreciation for all that Coach Smith and the University have done to keep you from ending up in Russia playing basketball in a renovated gulag. I also give Randolph the ability to filter out shysters and agents who try to get him to leave UK for the greener pastures of the NBA. Stay for the rest of this season and the next and I believe you will be fine.

To ESPN fans: I give you less Chris Berman and poker. Both of these things give me headaches and severe abdominal cramps, I just want some relief. I believe that next year ESPN original movies will be added to this list because those are already giving me double vision and dry mouth.

The Texas Longhorns basketball team: I would give the gift of a Texas Rose Bowl win over USC to take some pressure off of your crazy season, but we all know I can’t do that. So I just wish you good luck and I will make the Big 12 just as mediocre as it is every year.

To the USC Trojans: I give you a Rose Bowl victory, but I really wish you could let Texas stay in the game for a half. I expect USC will score 21 points on the Longhorns in the first quarter and I know that Big 12 football is a joke, but I am hoping that Texas can stay within 10 points for one half. Throw us a bone for crying out loud.

To all the NFL players on my fantasy team: I give you as horrible a showing in the playoffs as you gave me. You lead me to a first place finish but then you didn’t show up for work during the first week of the fantasy playoffs. I now must root against you for the rest of the season. Well, except for Carson Palmer, it’s not your fault Carson.

To the Cincinnati Bengals: I give you a fine showing in the playoffs and a full year of being referred to as the Cincinnati Bengals and not the Cincinnati Bungles.

Those are just a few things I would give to the sporting world if I were Santa Claus. My own personal sports wish list includes an NCAA title for the UK Wildcats, a World Series and a Super Bowl victory for Cincinnati, the return of softball and the introduction of kickball to Ohio County, and a stick.

I will be taking some time to enjoy the Christmas season and will return in the New Year. Thank you for putting up with my ranting and raving and I hope my faithful readers (all three of you) as well as the rest of you have a Merry Christmas, a happy holiday season, a Happy Festivus and a happy New Year.

New Daddy Diary, Entry #4

How do you handle the unruly people who touch your child? It's not like my son is the Ark of the Covenant, but if you're going to touch a newborn, then you touch him gently.

This weekend was Christmas for our family because my sister-in-law decreed it to be so. My nephew, 3 yrs old, was in typical hyperactive form. He screams, he runs, he chases my cat, etc. And best of all, he listens to no one and no time. I was holding my son, Aiden, when my nephew came grabbing his hands and hitting him in the head with them. Clearly, this is not how you touch a newborn.

As a father (new daddy or not) I wanted to bust the kid's behind because he wouldn't stop. But because his mother is walking the line between normal and witchcraft I didn't want to stir that pot. This post is actually about me being disappointed in myself. Because I should have stirred that pot and worn that child out.

I guess all new parents are protective of their children, but it seems that the other parents in the room should have the good sense to reign their kids in a bit. But these particular parents have no control over this boy. So I now feel challenged. When my brother and sister-in-law throw their hands up and say you can't control them, I want to show them that you can. For goodness sakes, if you can't at least temper the antics of a three year old, you're screwed when he gets older.

Before someone notes this, I expect to fail as a father in some areas. I know that my son will do things to embarass and anger me without question. I'll try to raise him the way I see fit and in a large sense he'll turn out just how he wants. But I know for a fact that consistent discipline and parenting works more times than not. I pray to God daily that I raise my son in the right way. I trust that will help. If need be someday, I'll not be too proud to ask for a young priest, an old priest and healthy jug of holy water. Anything to keep my son from acting like a complete wild animal.

The Power of Christ compels you!!!

King Kong

Best movie this year! The special effects are mind boggling. I don't think I am giving anything away by saying that there are dinsaurs involved in the movie. It was like Jurassic Park on steroids. The visuals blew J.Park away. I also don't think I am giving anything away by saying that there is a ship involved. If Titanic could have done this well with its effects it would have doubled it's income. Maybe not, but this was much better.

I think what I liked most about the whole thing was that it did the original justice. It was three hours that at the end I still could have handled more. The time on Skull Island is so no stop so edge of your seat. There were at least two times when I thought they weren't going to make it, even though I knew the actors where at the end of the movie.

Two words: Must See!!!

Front of the Parade

For those of you who know the Muckrakers, then let me make the review simple: this is exceptional work even for them. For you who don't know them, then it's time you get to know them. The Muckrakers are one of the best up and coming bands in the country. I went to college with the two lead guitarists. I've heard them play between 25 and 50 times. They are incredibly entertaining live and there musice holds true in the CD version.

french_toast and I just exchanged xmas presents since we will be out and about. Front of the Parade was one of my gifts. It is AMAZING!! There are a few familar tunes and lots of new ones. They are smooth and fun and can find their way into the background of any situation or can be the main focus of your relaxation. So I won't dwell on what it's going to take your listening to them. Click the link and enjoy; at $13 it's a steal.

Ashlee Simpson exhausted. Aren't we all?

Earlier in the week, Miami Heat head coach Stan Van Gundy resigned from his post citing the old stand by excuse of wanting to spend more time with his family. Many didn't believe it then and many do not believe it now. Most believe Pat Riley, legendary coach Pat Riley, wanted to coach this team for himself and the whole spending time with his family was the only excuse Van Gundy could come up with to explain his leaving a championship caliber team.

Now we have our second good old standby excuse of the week. Apparently Sivart's second favorite Simpson (and my first), Ashlee, has collapsed in Japan after a show. She had just performed her song "Boyfriend" and then told the audience she felt sick. She told them she loved them and as she got into an elevator she collapsed. She was rushed to the hospital.

No real details have been released on her condition and "stupposedly" she is still in the hospital. What has been released from one of those good old "unnamed sources" is that the collapse and fainting spell was caused by, you guessed it, "exhaustion." How many times have I heard that excuse used? Who else used it? Whitney? Mariah? Lindsay? I wonder how they got so exhausted? Who among us isn't exhausted? I am exhausted right now. My exhaustion is due to poor sleeping habits. I wonder what causes celebrity exhaustion?

Usually when I hear that excuse used for a fainting spell, I automatically believe that it is exhaustion brought on by staying up too late doing coke, but that's me. Hopefully it is nothing like that because you would hate to see another young star ruined by stupid drug use.

A slice of fried gold....

Well, actually I guess it's a cup of fried gold.

Pumpkin Spice cappuccino, baby. It rocks.

Yesterday Piccu and I headed over to Big Kev's last night and stopped by the local bodega.

I know what you are thinking, Po'dunk, Kentucky has a bodega? Not exactly, but it is a convenient store that has recognized that our growing hispanic community has no place to get authentic mexican convenient store items.

I know it sounds crazy but it's true. Among other things, it carries blackbeans, corn husks, dried peppers, mexican chocolate, jars of pretty solid tamales and fruit flavored drinks from Mexico with actual sugar in them. If we all stopped drinking soft drinks with high-fructose corn syrup and switched to those little beauties with sugar straight from the cane, it would probably kill us. This is also the only convenient store I know of that sells a pretty good portion of produce.

Anyway, yesterday Piccu and I stopped in for a frosty beverage and as I walked by the coffee/cappuccino area I noticed that the cappuccino machine offered pumpkin spice coffee.

I quickly made a mental note and got myself a cup this morning and it is awesome. I got a 12-14 ounce cup and threw in three little half-n-halfs and as Shaun would say from Shaun of the Dead...

It's a slice of fried gold. Or more like a drinking a slice of golden fried pumpkin pie. It's gold Jerry, gold.

Minnesota Vikings players indicted after incident on the "Love Boat."

Just when you think the public will slowly forget Al and Alma’s “love boats” you see that four Minnesota Vikings’ players have been indicted on charges of indecent conduct, disorderly conduct, and lewd or lascivious conduct. Those charged were Fred Smoot, Bryant McKinnie, Moe Williams, and the big dog Dante Culpepper. It’s always good to see that a University of Kentucky football alum makes the news in the NFL, but not like this. Moe Williams just rocketed to the top of the most recognized UK football players to play in the NFL.

If you haven’t heard about the infamous sex cruise, where have you been? Apparently a number of Vikings players decided to take a boat trip one week and they imported hookers from out of state and decided to have a fun time of “releggedly” taking off their clothes and engaging in public sex acts during the cruise and more lewd and drunken behavior. The unfortunate thing about all this is that they forgot to tell the crew of the rented “pleasure” boats that they were going to go all Caligula on the trip. Fred Smoot and Lance Johnstone rented the two boats and it would appear from those indicted that Fred’s was the one with all the action.

The Vikings are just now coming back from a 1-4 start. They are now 8-5 with a shot at the playoffs; everyone has stopped talking about this embarrassing episode and is now talking about an improbable finish to the season. Now they will once again be talking about the Lust on Lake Minnetonka. I have to assume that some of those indicted are married. I believe that the quarterback and leader of the team Dante Culpepper is married. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the Culpepper household when the indictments came down.

It will be interesting to see how the players handle the new media attention they will receive and which married players will stay married after this is all said and done. Will this latest round of athletic stupidity and indictments for said stupidity help some of these athletes that feel they can do anything they want? I think not. In fact I can’t wait until the next sports star makes and arse of himself.

To wrap or not to wrap, that is the question.

I was listening to Bob and Tom today, like everyday, and they were discussing Christmas presents. The main question was does Santa wrap presents? Bob and Tom said that Santa wraps everything, while Kristi and Chick said that Santa did not wrap and the toys that needed to be put together would be set up and ready to go. Tom then said that at his home, if the toy was a something that had to be put together then it would be set up, but that it would have a bow on it or a note from Santa. I guess there is no right or wrong way, as a kid I just thought that all presents from Santa were unwrapped. All that unwrapping as a kid would just delay that fix that we all needed so bad. The visiting comedian, Chad Daniels, then said that he had his gifts put together and set up too, but they lived next to Jewish kids so Santa had the time.

I guess I have never thought about this, because really who thinks about this, but I remember my presents from Santa were never wrapped. And I never received presents from my parents, unless my memory is fuzzy in my old age. Later on in life, around the age I “found out,” the presents were wrapped and were from my parents. I do not remember when or how I “found out.” I think I caught the perpetrators in the act and realized what was going on. I don’t remember it being a traumatic experience, what did I care, I was still getting my loot. I also saved on postage to the North Pole.

I also remember waking up at the crack of dawn and running into the living room to survey the gifts that had arrived in the night. As I got older we don’t open presents sometime until 10 or 11 AM. This Christmas the schedule will be thrown off a bit with church being on Christmas day. My mom has to sing in a couple of Christmas Con-ta-tas and I don’t expect to open presents until after church, perhaps not until after lunch. That will be weird. It all seemed so much easier when you were little and the presents appeared out of nowhere.

Finally...

Apparently we've finally gotten our newest member on board. I sent her the invite so long ago I forgot about it. Piccu and I haven't seen her in forever so maybe she can open up with a little post about what's going on and introduce herself to the readers and writers.

Charlie Brown, making Christmas merry for 40 years.

More TV news has it that A Charlie Brown Christmas was the 8th most watched show of the week in which it was aired. Not only that, but it was top rated in both the young viewers (2-11) and the more mature (25-54).That is pretty good for a show that is 40 years old and on DVD. Did you watch it? I have it DVRed waiting for the right time to watch it. I also DVRed the Grinch last night. I have a few shows and movies I have to watch this season, just like there are certain horror movies I like to watch during Halloween.

I have to watch Christmas Vacation during this time of year. I would assume that most everyone does. It is a movie that our group of friends could mute the volume and repeat the dialogue from memory. My other must see movie for the Christmas season is Friday After Next. Craig and Day Day are at it again, this time during the Christmas season. It is another one that I could watch without sound and repeat the dialogue from memory. The Toast I believe does not hold this movie quite as close to her heart as I do, when in Rome. So goes my Christmas entertainment tradition: cool Christmas music, cool Christmas cartoons, cool Christmas DVDs and a very cool Christmas night movie in the theaters. A tradition for the ages.

Beware of the Dog.

Good news, good news. The Dog is back. That’s right, Bratch’s favorite bounty hunter, Dog Chapman, is coming back to A&E for a third season. You have never seen the Dog? He is a bounty hunter that lives and works in Hawaii. He has the whole repressed hair band lead singer look going on. He has the long hair with some feathers weaved into it. He wears leather most times and his clothes are almost always black. He is a muscular dude, he probably became that way after his stay in prison. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, he is a Christian. Caught you off guard, didn’t I? Yes the Dog is keeping the streets clean for the law and the Lord.

I have watched every episode of Dog and every episode is the same thing. This family of bounty hunters gathers and discusses that day’s criminal they need to capture. They seem to find some reason to think that this con is going to fight or this one is going to run or this one has a weapon and 9 times out of 10 they walk up to them and arrest them with no trouble. The best shows are the shows where the con runs or fights. And every capture begins with Dog cussing the convicts like a sailor and after the capture he is leading them to the Lord. By the end of the episode, the convict is born again and is offered help getting a job. It is really a crazy show. Check it out this Tuesday with a mini marathon starting at 8 PM Central. Enjoy!!!

In more good news, good news, it appears that the rumors of Arrested Development’s demise were exaggerated. According to Yahoo news, both ABC and Showtime are interested in bringing Arrested Development to their networks if, if Fox cancels the show. That sounds weird, I though Fox had already cancelled the show. It only ordered 13 episodes of the greatest comedy on television for this season. They might as well cancel the show.

Perhaps this desire by other networks to have the show will help Fox realize how good this show is. Maybe they could stop moving the show to a different night every season and try to help build on the show’s audience. I think they have to move it back to Sunday nights after The Simpsons and give it a couple of years. That seems to me to be the only place a show like this can grow. If it doesn’t make it there, it can’t make it anywhere.

ABC has no comedy and Showtime has nothing at all. I’m not sure either network would be a help for this series. If only NBC would get involved, Arrested Development would make a great addition to Must See TV Thursday.

Let's swing by grandma's for some cookies and some dope

A fellow resident here at SC brought an article printed from news max. Though it is dated yesterday, I can't find it to link it. The title is "Seniors Selling Prescription Pills for Cash." It is in Prestonsburg, Ky, and basically tells the story of the quickly growing group of old people or to be p.c., geysers, who are taking there prescription pills selling them at $10 a pop. There is some debate whether the people are using the money to pay bills and but food, versus just coming from a family of drug dealers. Depending on who you ask there is probably some of both going on. They discuss the difficulty of have elderly in jail due to medical concerns.

I don't know who out there has seen the episode of Andy Griffeth, where they are looking for who is running shine. Turns out it is the two old ladies running it out of there house. This whole thing just wreaks of that.

Ignorance Encounter

Racism, in whatever form, is hardly surprising to encounter. It happens all over the place all of the time. But it's when it hits you personally that it takes you aback and knocks your bearings all off.
Today I encountered a bit of it from a person I respect and like quite a bit. It was not the kind of hateful racism that Maury pimps out to raise the ratings or anything. The topic of interracial marriage was brought up. She said she was raised to believe it wasn't right. I asked if she had since gotten over this, and she confessed she had not.
At this point I fight off being offended and simply ask, "You do know that my wife is Mexican-American right?" Of course she does. Now, how she reconciles this, I have no idea. I ask her why she thinks that's wrong and she says it's in the bible. I frankly reply that it is not. At least not in the way she thinks.
To clear things up a bit, the Old Testament mentions several times that God had commanded the nation of Israel to not intermarry with the Pagan nations. God surely had his reasons, but being rather uneducated in this portion of biblical study, I won't dare attempt to figure out what they were. But it was only mentioned in regard to the Jews.
I am not a Jew. This is where many people fall into error when studying the bible is not understanding that the laws that applied to God's people in the Old Testament do not apply to Christians today, necessarily. Certainly some do carry over, but we are not slaughtering spotless lambs to atone for our sins annually. Nor are we observing the seventh day of the week to worship. We use the first day of the week, as the apostles did. We repent and seek the redemption from sins through Christ's sacrafice, as the apostles and other early followers of the ressurrected Christ did.
This ignorance of the differences between the Old Testament (Old Covenant, Old Law, if you will) and the law of Christ is what led to my racial encounter. I didn't take offense and I attempted to explain why I'm not transgressing God's law. I hope she studies on it.
Racism and ignorance are alive and kicking and frankly until Christians do a better job of teaching others and spreading knowledge of Christ's law, it will persist.
Today, I've used the blog to get things off my chest. If you're reading, thanks for letting me have that opportunity. If you disagree with me in anything I said, reply and let's study it. The truth is more important than pride.

Nutty World Leaders

Take a moment and reflect on all the times you've been told, or it's been implied that our president is an imbecile. Ok, it takes much longer than a moment. Take the day off, come back, read the rest of this post tomorrow.

Seriously, George W. Bush is an easy target. He's a terrible public speaker. He looks uncomfortable answering the simplest of questions. He couldn't even open that door at the press conference in China. So it's understandable that SNL subjected us to wretched impressions of Bush by Will Forte (Will Ferrell set the bar really high, but Forte just stinks. Worst cast member since Melany Hutsell.) It's within reason that we see John Stewart nightly making fun of him. And it's fine.

But, brothers and sisters, I think we should thank God for President Bush when you glance around the world. Consider the following...

Vicente Fox, Mexico. Basically drives his people out of the country with one of the worst economies known to man.

Jacques Chirac, France. A man so French, he wouldn't send the army into to quell a teenager riot and instead let them run rampant for about two weeks. He didn't support the Iraq War because the proof now shows he was on the take in the U.N. Oil for Food scandal that still receives entirely too little press.

Kim Jong Ill, North Korea. He runs North Korea, threatens the world almost daily, and is basically as insane as Hitler, just not as savvy.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , Iran. Yet another man who has risen to power who is so insane, he honestly believes the holocaust is a joke. He expects the world to believe IRAN when they say they only want nuclear capability to generate power. Yeah, he wants to generate power all right. He also wants to destroy Israel because the "prophet" Muhammed wrote in a book that the land belonged to Muslims. Of course scholars believe Muhammed started the Quran around 620 AD which means the Jews had been in possession of it for several centuries. But I digress.

That's four examples by a guy (me) who really doesn't know that much about world politics, but those are some nutty leaders. Our president my be half moron and half idiot. Personally, I think he's a stubborn guy who goes with his gut, and is a terrible communicator. But ultimately, he's been a decent president in some very trying situations. But thank God (literally. Do it.) that we don't have one of those nuts. A little power in the hands of a psycho, is a mighty dangerous thing.

Too Hot? Insert here.

Check out this new device. It is essentially and cool place to stick your hands. Why would you do this? Well, it looks like working in the heat can be improved with this new device which effectively decreases overall body temperature. Theoretically, this decreases reisk f heat stroke and would improve performance in athletes and workers. So the next time a highway department worker is standing holding the stop sign on a stick, don't just offer him advice. Offer him a dip in the CoreControl device.

But seriously, it is pretty "cool" so click the link and check it out.

Row, Row, Row your boat (and bring cash)

Lexington Kevin also known to I-A readers as Trent will be home for the holidays the same time we will. He is pumped up about a boat trip and I think it needs to happen. We will take this opportunity to tap into big Kev's compulsive gambling and maybe finally introduce Big Kev to Lexington Kevin. Oh, what a sight! Times and dates are subject to discussion, but regardless get your blackjack, index finger primed to do some tapping and hit one more time.

King of Kings

Tonight is the AMC and TCM salute to King Kong. One channel will show the more recent remake and the other will the original. So set the DVR to tape bones and house, grab a beverage and set your faces to stunned.

I can't wait. I am seriously contemplating attempting to see this in the IMAX if it is indeed there.

Ohio County Should Honor Oldham

The linked story above is to a piece by Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer columnists/sports editor Jim Pickens. The piece talks about Western Kentucky University's need to honor former player and coach John Oldham. I wholeheartedly agree. Currently Oldham's jersey is retired, but for a guy with the accomplishments that Pickens list, that honor is underwhelming.

But shift focus to Ohio County. Oldham graduated from the former Hartford High School where he was a force. He then went to WKU where he was an All American in 1949. He played for two years for the Ft. Wayne Pistons. He guided WKU as a coach to the Final Four in 1971, beating UK in the tournament.

What has Ohio County done to honor Oldham? A park. No, a rundown shell of a park that doesn't even have a basketball goal named for the best basketball player to ever come out of the County. That's ridiculous.

Much like Ohio County basically ignoring former MLB SS Ray Chapman, OC has chosen to ignore a sports icon from the area. Why? Oldham and Chapman should be remembered and honored by Ohio County government as well as the high school. Anything less is embarassing.

Dun, dun, da dun dun! CHiPs is back!

Well, I knew it wasn’t far off and now it’s here, a big screen retelling of the CHiPs story. Apparently Wilmer Valderrama is going to star as Officer Francis “Ponch” Poncherello in the remake. Wilmer who? Fez on That 70’s Show. I am not sure that Fez has the unbridled charisma that Erik Estrada does, so I am not sold on this. I believe that Erik Estrada could still play the part. He is just as cool as ever, but I digress.

I must say that I have been a huge fan of CHiPs all my life. It was the same show every time, kind of like House, but it worked. The only time that I kind of soured on it was when they jumped the shark and Larry Wilcox left. He played Ponch’s partner Officer Jon Baker. And who didn't love the techno disco theme song? I love it so much I have a ringtone of it.

Every episode started out with a horrendous car crash, many times leading to an explosion. Midway through the episode there was a car chase, well a motorcycle-car chase, which ended with the crooks getting away. The end of the show included another small chase, a huge explosion, and the apprehension of the crooks without any weapons being drawn or fired by Ponch or Jon. Then just before the closing credits roll they all met up after hours at a disco or a roller rink and boogied the night away. Then the credits rolled and there were freeze frame moments of people laughing at a joke made at Ponch’s expense. Good times.

Hopefully they will make the show less like the Starsky and Hutch remake and more like a funny movie. Heck, I would go to the theater to see the original episodes. I have to believe that in the long run the reruns will be much better than the movie. Look at Starsky and Hutch and the Dukes and you can plainly see that. Even so, I am sure they will trick me into going, they all do.

Tom Cruise, weird in life, but cool on film.

If you are a faithful I-A reader, and I am sure you are, then you saw my little piece on Tom Cruise taking the title of biggest weirdo in America from Michael Jackson. When Michael Jackson really got into his weirdness, it seemed that everything he touched turned to crap.

Tom Cruise it seems had truly embraced his weirdness during the publicity for War of the Worlds and it didn’t seem to hurt the box office. Of course, Steven Spielberg may have had something to do with the box office, but never the less. You may agree with me in thinking Cruise has gone over the edge into crazy town but, dang it all, I still want to see Mission Impossible III this summer. Click the link for the trailer and I bet you will feel the same. Enjoy!!!

It looks like a blue Christmas ahead for the UK Wildcats.

It looks like a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas for UK fans this year after their performance against Indiana. Maybe I should have said lack of performance. I have not seen a UK team look so out of it. Some of the players looked as if they had never played organized basketball in their life. The team had four assists for the whole game. Is that even possible? Four assists? That must be a mistake. I could pick up four people from the Times-News staff and get six assists against Indiana.

Once again, Tubby has to go back to the drawing board. This season has been a season of ups and downs and trips to the drawing board. When UK plays a Georgia State they look great. When they play a North Carolina they look like mush. The only thing UK fans have to hold on to is the fact that UK seems to beat the teams they are supposed to beat (except for North Carolina and Indiana). All the small schools that have been scheduled to give the young players some experience have been beaten and beaten soundly. Bully for them.

Now we find out that Randolph Morris will not be eligible for this season and from what I hear there is about a 0% chance that this decision will be overturned. Perhaps when this ordeal is totally finished and the players know Morris will not be back to bail them out, things will get better.

In some ways I feel bad for Morris, but I also feel like he got what he deserved. He wanted out so bad he gambled with his career and he lost. I find it hard to believe that a player that was so anxious to leave college after his freshman year will want to hang around for a year NOT playing basketball.

I feel that once this semester is over, Randolph Morris will be in Turkey playing ball. I do hope that the “advisors” that convinced this kid that he would be a first round pick have had their mouths super glued shut. They have no business being around basketball because they obviously did not see what the rest of the country saw in Randolph Morris.

What can Tubby do to help this team rise above their obvious lack of talent? Or is it lack of athleticism? Or is it lack of shooting ability? Or is it all of the above? I am not exactly sure what the main problem is. It appears that UK is one great player, Rajon Rondo, and a group of role players. So, how can I, a Julliard trained columnist help Tubby out? I can give him some suggestions, some creative and some more realistic.

First things first, this team is not that tough. When a team has three seven footers but they can be blown out of the post by a mild gust of wind, you have problems. I have a great idea that will toughen these big men up. You put them in the post, one at a time, and throw them a ball. When they catch the ball in the post, they have to take a shot. When a player gets the ball, the rest of the team will swing bags of oranges at the player. Until all three big men score ten points the exercise will continue. This helps toughen up the seven footers and helps the team take out their frustration on them.

Another thing I would suggest is a lay-up drill especially made for the Wildcats. In this drill the player must lay in or dunk the basketball. Every time a player misses he gets a small but painful electric shock. Because the UK players cannot seem to hit the easy lay ups, they will miss many of these shots and will be shocked many, many times.

After a few weeks of this intense drill, they will not miss another lay-up again. This of course would also be used with free throws, only the small shock would be even more painful. Because, well, hitting a shot while standing alone with nobody defending you should be easy.

Another suggestion would be to not start Patrick Sparks. I believe he would be better utilized in a Cameron Mills role. He could come off the bench to spell Rondo or Ramal Bradley and hit a couple of threes. Sparks seems to be struggling on the defensive end and his shooting is too streaky. Perhaps this role will take some pressure of Sparks and enable him to get into a better groove. At this point I would try anything.

Who to start ahead of Sparks? That is a good question and right now I would have to say Joe Crawford. Crawford has been playing with reckless abandon since he came back from his injury. Not only is he scoring some points, but he is rebounding as well, and if the team needs one thing, it needs rebounding. I also think Ramal Bradley should be looked at as a starter. He needs to take better care of the ball, but he is just so quick that he and Rondo could average 8 steals a night.

The only thing I know for sure is that UK’s athletic director must be sweating bullets. He surely has had the boosters and fans all over him for the Rich Brooks situation, the last thing he needs is an under 20 win season and a first round NCAA tourney exit from the basketball team. I truly think that Tubby can right the ship, but it will be a task and a half. If he doesn’t right the ship, it may be hard for him to hang onto his job.

While I think that Tubby is a great coach and he should be given a little lee way considering he won a title at UK, I do believe his recruiting does leave something to be desired. In this day and age you need players who are ready to contribute and in some cases dominate as a freshman and sophomore. UK right now has a solid group of players who are just not quite ready for prime time. The juniors have about as much experience as the sophomores. The only way to remedy this situation is playing time.

There is some good news for UK fans. I believe that the Louisville Cardinals are in the same boat. I think they will struggle this year in their new conference. The Big East is big boy basketball and U of L has a brutal conference schedule. The Cards, like the Cats, have not shown me much so far this season. They are number 5 in the country but have struggled to beat mediocre teams by seven and eight points. As an example of things to come this year, they only managed to score 53 points against Arkansas State. In more good news for UK fans, I believe UK will beat U of L this weekend if only because it will be at Rupp, but it will not change the fact that it will be a long season for the Wildcats.

Perhaps with one season under their belts as major contributors, UK’s juniors and sophomores can make a difference next year. I have a feeling that scenario will not work for about 90% of Wildcat Nation. It is a fan base that craves instant gratification. Unfortunately whether you like it or not it may be a long and sometimes ugly waiting game before these Cats provide that gratification.

Catholic vs Private Schools

In the state of Kentucky, the separation of private and public schools in state athletic tournaments has gotten a lot of attention in the past year. The four classes of state football championships this season did nothing but stoke a roaring fire.

Consider this, of the eight teams competing for state championships in their respective classes, five were private catholic schools. By my quick, very unofficial count, only eleven of the 221 high schools that play football in Kentucky are private. I'm almost certain that count is off, so take it with a large grain of salt, but the point is a very small percentage of schools are private, yet they made up 63% of the participants in the state football title games.

An even better argument in my opinion is the argument of Bowling Green High. BGHS dominated the regular and post seasons, with only a loss to 4A champ St. Xavier (a Catholic school.) BGHS gave up only 54 points in their first fourteen games. If you're scoring at home, that's about 3.86 points per game. In the title game against Lexington Catholic, they gave up 49 points. BGHS didn't suddenly forget how to play defense, they got beat by a team that recruits better players than BGHS sees enroll.

Two losses on the year, both to Catholic schools. 103 points given up on the year, 62 to Catholic schools in two games (just 41 to 13 other opponents.)

I don't want to see the schools divided because for schools like Owensboro Catholic and other small private schools, it would be a death sentence. But for football at least, something needs to be done to once again level the playing field. If not for OCatholic's loss to Russell in the 2A title game, Catholic schools would have swept the state titles. It's time for a change.

Christmas songs to check out this season.

Christmas, Christmas time is here, time for something, time for cheer. It is also time for good ol’ Christmas music. I used to be one of those people who couldn’t stand to hear Christmas music unless you were in church or it was Christmas Eve. Apparently in my old age I have now become a Christmas music fan. Maybe it helps me to slow down and enjoy the season a little more. I even have my own rotation of songs that I must listen to every season.

In fact, I just downloaded an embarrassing amount of songs from Itunes today. I lost my cd of illegally downloaded Christmas songs and I had to start anew. Unfortunately I could not get two of my faves, but I replaced most of them and even added a few. Here are a few songs you should check out this season.

To begin with, you can never go wrong with any Christmas song by Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Burl Ives, and especially “Der Bingle” Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley (this all goes without saying).

Any song from A Charlie Brown Christmas.

I normally do not like Bruce Springsteen, but his version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” is excellent.

The Kinks Father Christmas
John Mellencamp I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Bing Crosby Mele Kalikimaka
The McKenzie Brothers The 12 Days of Christmas (“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a beer in a tree”)
Nat King Cole The Christmas Song
The Temptations Silent Night
Donnie Hathaway This Christmas
The Ramones Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)
The Carpenters Merry Christmas Darling (Actually any Christmas song by the Carpenters is good.)
Fats Domino Please Come Home for Christmas
Eric Cartman O Holy Night (The version with the cattle prod)

There were two songs I could not get from Itunes and these are two great songs. One is John Lennon’s Happy Christmas (War is Over) and the other is Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime. I guess Itunes has not been authorized to sell their music which does not suit me, but I have XM and their 4 or 5 Christmas music channels to help me find them.

Those are a few songs that I highly recommend for your listening pleasure. I am sure you have favorites of your own, but maybe there is something here that will become a new favorite. I also must highly recommend any and all traditional hymns whether they be sung by choirs or “stars” or anyone. Those are truly the best songs for this season. Enjoy!!!!!

Stan Van Gundy "resigns." Could retun to adult films be far behind?

Okay, does anyone really believe that Stan Van Gundy is “resigning” because he wants to spend more time with his family? Isn’t this the generic excuse that is used when someone is forced out of their position and there is no answer other than the most obvious? The obvious answer in this case is that Pat Riley sees the team that has been constructed in Miami and he wants it. He has already talked openly about how he would love to coach Shaq and Shaq loves Riley.

Shaq + Riley = resigned Van Gundy

I would not be surprised to find out that both Shaq and Riley were behind this. I will also not be surprised to read in the off season about Van Gundy’s desire to return to coaching. He will say this after speaking with his family of course. I would imagine that until he is ready to return to coaching, Van Gundy will spend time with his family and resume his adult film career under his alias, Ron Jeremy (click the link and see for yourself).

New Daddy Diary, Entry #3

Sleep? What Sleep?!?!

Among the hundreds of cliches parents endure during a pregnancy, the most common is the, "Enjoy your sleep while you can" cliche. I, like every father before me, appreciated the obvious advice but got very tired of hearing the same things over and over.

Nothing could have been more true than that cliche however. Sleep has become a rare commodity, far more precious than gold. Me complaining about my sleep is downright shameful when you consider the serious lack of sleep my wife has to endure as a breastfeeding mother. Several times a night she is up with him, changing, feeding, burping and rocking. The whole ordeal last for nearly an hour. When that happens three or four times a night, then you can see the problem.

Mrs. Worfner and I had decided that Sunday morning would be young Aiden's first trip to church services. On Saturday night and into Sunday morning, Aiden changed our plans. He was very fussy all night, but at 3AM he woke up and stayed up until 7:30. Needless to say, my wife and son didn't accompany me to services that morning. Since I was only up for less than half of that, I did manage to make it although I missed out on bible study before services.

I have the ability to sleep through my child's screams. I'm not bragging, in fact, it's embarassing to me. My wife has accused me of ignoring him, and deep down I think she believes I am. I tell you I am not. I told her early on, just wake me up and I'll be glad to change him and do what I can. For 3 1/2 weeks she never would take me up on it. I'm glad to say she got over that this weekend. And I truly am thankful. It helps alleviate some of my guilt for not being able to do more.

So all you soon to be fathers and potential parents, enjoy your sleep now. It's a rarity when you become the parent of a newborn. At least I'm at work now where I can catch up on my rest.

Catan: expanding the universe

For those of you who haven't played The Settlers of Catan, I warn you that your time is coming. This is a game that has been around for some time, but is slowly growing in popularity in the US. To give a brief description, it is a strategy game for 3-4 people and it takes a fraction of the time that risk takes. It involves building settlements and roads to new places to build new settlements. And upgrading settlements to cities. The bottom line is that the first one to ten wins and there are multiple ways to get points so each game you determine what will be the fastest way for you to get there.

We have introduced the game to a few new people and have met some others who have played a long time. Piccu and Bratch have played it a little, but it really gets better after you play 3 times or so.

In addition there are expansions to the game which add new rules and make the game continue to be interesting. Oh, and another thing is that the board changes every game.

If you haven't heard of this and like board games, then check it out. It is a lot of fun.

A New Idea of What to do with the Family Farm

Diggin' up potatoes? Not in Asia. More like digging up Orcs. Game fars are a new craze taking over Asia. Here are these places where people live and eat and "work." If you call work building up PC game players much in the tradition of Ever Quest. Now the game is Warcraft World. So essentially these people spend all day doing the leg work building up money and weapons for a character on the game. Then they sell the character and repeat. i have heard that if the good people of World Warcraft find out then they delete the character.

Video games are fun, but paying someone to play it for you? C'mon, if you are going to get addicted to a PC game atleast have the decency to do it yourself.

I had a classmate in Med school who nearly flunked out because he was playing Everquest. He ended up selling his junk on ebay and quitting. The price tag: $10,000.

Check out the link for more details on the article and pictures of the compound.

Howard Stern and satellite radio...

First of all, I'm a bit of a radiophile. I really love good radio.

That being said, there isn't much good radio here in western Kentucky. In fact, there isn't any good radio at all. That is except for good old satellite radio like XM or Sirius. Piccu and I have XM radio which is beyond great. I love my XM radio as much or more than Piccu and Merlin love their DVR/TiVos.

Dec. 16 will also be the last day of Howard Stern's career as a "terrestrial" radio personality. Beginning Jan. 9 or so he'll be on Sirius satellite radio and in the article linked in the title, he's already coming up with insanely over the top ideas. On satellite radio he has no boundaries. Anything and everything will go and Sirius increased it's subscriptions from about 600,000 to 2.2 million since the announcement of Stern's move.

I haven't heard much of Sirius, but I dig some of their radios and they have some interesting looking shows, but when Piccu and I got in with XM it was because XM had the foot hold and was the smarter choice. Sirius has too many channels of just one artist. If I want to hear all Rolling Stones or all Tupac I'll listen to their CDs. Even though I have no Tupac CDs... Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The problem I have with Stern is the same problem I have with XM's Opie and Anthony. Opie and Anthony were fired from terrestrial radio because of the wild things they did on their morning talk show. I think broadcasting two people having sex in a church confessional or something did them in.

Either way, XM put O&A on their own channel and if you wanted that channel it was going to cost you an extra $2.95 or something. I'm going to say that very few people wanted to pay the extra fee. Then XM moved O&A to a channel called High Voltage and I believe they conveniently raised their subscription fees from $9.95 to $12.95 thinking that no one would notice and acted like they were doing us a favor.

Until now, you could hear O&A 24-7 with the live show in the morning and replays all day. Now they've added Ron & Fez which I've not listened to as of yet.

I listen to the Monsters in the Morning on Extreme 152. The Monsters are based in Orlando and syndicated on one other station. They are funny and have had a lot of drama on the show in that one of their members got mad and bailed on the show, but moved to another show since she had a contract with the station. Anyway, all of the remaining Monsters hate her now, but the show is funny because they just beat on each other, talk and let ignorant rednecks call in.

I've listened to Stern before and he's horrible. It's 6 hours of whatever he talked about in the first hour mixed in with making fun of hookers and porn stars. As if they had a wonderful childhood and when they graduated with honors from college they decided the sex-trade was for them. Then Stern will sometimes pick on a celebrity and pound on them with the same jokes for the entire show as it the jokes are just as fresh at 11 a.m. as they were when he came up with them at 5 a.m.

O&A is pretty much like that, but they curse so much it really takes away from the show since they are only on XM. I've always thought that bleeps and complete dumps were more funny than hearing the actual word. But they just do crazy over the top stuff and curse all of the time. So it's not appealing to me.

That's why I would rather listen to the Monsters. They are on satellite radio, but they still risk getting thrown off of Clear Channel. And since they are a crew of about 7 people, some of which are making at least $100,000, I'm thinking that they don't want to rock the boat. In fact, all of Extreme 152 on XM is shows from terrestrial stations. The Monsters, Tony Kornheiser, Lex & Terry (thanks XM for moving G. Gordon Liddy to Ask), then the Phillips Phile, Phil Hendrie, Davie Lawrence and John & Jeff. I'm not a big fan of Hendrie, but you can listen to Extreme all day long and have a blast.

Good talk radio is nonexistent outside of major cities and I like the radio for music too. Sure you can listen to your own CDs but the radio turns you on to other music and with XM, since you can see the band name and song title, you might find a song that you liked, but never knew who played it.

Then you make your way to iTunes and download that sucker. But that's for another time.

My brief turn on the couch

The lay person (including myself prior to med school) really doesn't understand what psychiatry is relative to psychology or other medicine. So in brief, we are trained to be experts in the psychiatric medications (which there are several that are increasingly better understood), diagnosing disorders based on symptoms, psychotherapy (think of the couch), and a few assorted procedures. Psychologists do the testing which we use the results. This is actually more involved than you may think.

Anyway, to get to the point of this post, I was in psychotherapy lecture and we were discussing a recent tragedy with one of our colleagues. We started talking about suicide and the effect it has on the caregivers. I was listening and interjected my limited experience with a high school classmate commiting suicide. It was pretty profound the effect it had on me since we were friends but not great friends. I immediately went back to the time I found out about the whole thing and the difficulty I had with the whole situation. The psychotherapist, without meaning to, slipped into her therapy mode with me. She asked a couple of questions that I had not ever thought about and essentially I was in the fetal position sucking my thumb. Well, that is an exageration, but the experience was profound.

It is amazing how a few well placed very simple questions can reveal so much. I really enjoy this part of my training so far; I hope to continue to get better at it.

Success, but not in the snow...

OK, so I'm easily impressed.

I just printed my first test CD on my new printer and it is too cool. I set it up to print a little light, so it is a little light now, but it might also darken up after the mandatory 24 hour drying period.

It didn't snow today despite the forecasted 5-8 inches we were supposed to get. We did probably get an inch and a half of rain though. That would probably equal up in frozen form.

Anyway, this printer, the Epson Stylus Photo R220 is phenomenal. Especially for the money($100). I've read on several web sites that it's not the best for text printing, but it is supposed to be great for photos. Also inexpensive to boot as far as buying photo paper and ink for 4x6 and 5x7 photos. It will also print 8x10 photos, but photo paper isn't that cheap in 8x10 form. When it really comes down to it, Wal-Mart or Walgreens is the way to go for photo printing.

No consumer printer you can buy will touch their giant Fujifilm machine. You can get your digital photos out of the same machine that people get their film processed in and it will look much better than any consumer printer. And with professional results for .19 cents (4x6), $1.57 (5x7) and $2.84 (8x10) you're a fool for even considering purchasing a printer just for printing photos. You might be able to spend $500-$1000 and get a printer worthy of a contest to beat Wal-Mart, but it will wear out before you can print enough photos to make it worth the money.

The sole reason I bought this printer was for printing these CDs. A guy at a computer store in Owensboro where a friend of mine works, turned me onto it since I didn't want to spend too much money, but wanted better results than the last time. The odd part about it is that all of the manuals and documentation with the printer have all of these precautions and steps you should take to make it all go and they really weren't needed. They wanted to make sure that the image was positioned right and I'm sure that the print heads didn't miss the disc all together. I just printed the thing just to see if it would work and it was perfect.

I also shot a wedding a few weeks ago while my buddy shot the video so I might get some printable DVDs and make another copy of the DVD I authored of the video.

It really amazes me how far everything has come since I started fiddling with computers over 10 years ago. We were compressing huge complex 6 megabyte graphics and having to span them across 3 floppy discs so we could print them on the computer with the printer hooked up to it.

Now I have a wireless network in my house and I have a tiny jump drive that I can plug into any computer that can hold over 100 times as much data as a floppy disc which are all but a thing of the past. And those giant 6 megabyte files are now pushing well past 60 megabytes and they aren't really that complex.

And the biggest change is that I'm not even using Windows anymore. I just got in as Windows 3.1 had given way to Windows 95 which was like the British Invasion when it was released. Educated on Windows machines and laughed at the Mac-heads and their crappy and crashy OS 9 computers.

Now I'm using OS X powered Macs and wonder how you people live with Windows.

A day that will live in infamy

I know that today is the day that John Lennon was killed about 25 years ago, but that's not what this is about. The day I'm talking about is yesterday which was the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor way back in 1941.

I didn't really see or hear too much about Pearl Harbor yesterday. I wasn't really looking for it I must say, but I've noticed a lot about Lennon's death today. I'm not going to say that they are giving Lennon more air time than they did an entire generation of heroes, but I would have to say that news organizations are giving it an awful lot of time.

I don't guess I have too much of a problem with it because it was in the 1980's and Howard Cosell announced it on Monday Night Football back when people partied hard on Monday night for the game.

However, I think it was Tom Brokaw that labeled the WWII generation as "the greatest generation" and he's right. And that isn't just Americans. That war was truly faught on every continent except Antarctica. Everyone has a relative or knows someone who was in WWII. Yesterday I attended an event and a local Pearl Harbor survivor was also in attendance. In fact he's on the front page of the regional daily newspaper today at another event from yesterday.

Go check out some movies and see what some of these folks did for their countries. Heck, Hollywood was making movies about the war during the war. Granted, most of those movies don't depict the actual violence as realistically as Steven Spielberg does in the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, but special effects afford that these days.

And the U.S. and its citizens mobilized its military and sacrificed everything even when the Great Depression was still in full swing. Rival companies like Ford and Willys/Jeep both produced Jeeps. And they were created with small parts so that factories that normally built things like refrigerators could make hoods and fenders for the military.

Lennon being killed was a major event, but it isn't in the same league as Pearl Harbor and even though Pearl Harbor was around 40 years earlier, time shouldn't begin to diminish that day's significance. Pearl Harbor being attacked officially began WWII. Which spawned Midway, The Battle of the Bulge, D-Day and the atomic bombing of Japan.

It truly amazes me sometimes when I go cover a story or something out in one of the three Japanese factories we have right out in my backyard. To think of what they did to the U.S. and what it cost that country. They attacked a military installation and we dropped two atomic bombs on top of local metro areas killing 120,000 people instantly.

Look at it like this. In this day of instant news on the TV, after seeing that war go down we'd all be in therapy and Merlin would be a billionaire.

Unbelievable.

So remember today for John Lennon, but also keep in mind the half dozen or more other days of remembrance that began on Dec. 7, 1941.

Weight Loss is Easy:just don't eat.

This was the jist of this new diet talked about on the Today Show yesterday morning. After a brief search I couldn't find the link to get to the interview or to info about the book the woman was peddling.

It was completely insane. Essentially, she said eat what you want and worry about losing the weight and not eating healthy at this point. For example, if you have craving for ice cream then eat it. One stipulation, and it's really a minor detail: don't eat when you're not hungry. Simple enough, right? UHHHHHHHHH, how 'bout no. I don't completely disagree that if you are really deciding between obesity and eating healthy, obesity is worse to a point. So sure if eating a bowl of ice cream is going to keep you from eating at the buffet then eating the ice cream too; I day go for it.

Here in lies the glaringly disssapointing problem: the mass of people with obesity issues cannot control what they eat and how much. This moron was making it sound as if that was all there is too it. That really is all there is to it, but people can't break that. If just deciding to change your eating habits with no further help of plans worked we wouldn't be in this mess. I see this as a novel approach to dieting and weight loss that will help a small percentage of people and worsen or at least in no way benefit the masses. Oh, I forgot to mention that it is a way to line the pockets of someone who is making money off this crap book.

Here is some free advice that will work if carried out guaranteed. If you exercise more and eat less total calories regardless of the content of calories, you will lose weight. If the content of the calories are from diverse healthy sources, then you get more benefit. Really, in a nut shell that is all there is to the mechanics of weight loss and better health. There are many ways to improve the how's of getting to a good point with good plan, but you have to ask me to get my opinion for your specific situation.

Oh, and don't waste time or money on that book. There are better solutions.

Dads & Daughters album to be reissued

Yes that's right folks, we've decided to do a second pressing of the Dads and Daughters' album Song Books and Pianos.

Some of you may or may not know that the Dads and Daughters is a gospel group that is made up of some of myself, Piccu's and Merlin's family members. My grandfather was sort of the leader the of group and my mother plays the piano with my aunt and cousin and great uncle involved as well, among others.

Basically every dad had a daughter in the group, but I guess what made people love their music so much is that anyone that wanted to sing along could join in. Of course they had a nice group of really solid singers that they would use to fill in, but the core group was what made them go.

Piccu and I made up these CDs last Christmas and gave them away. The recordings are far from professional. They were made with the cheapest boomboxes and cassette players that money could buy. They were all made by my grandfather and he only made them to see how they sounded. He passed away several years ago as have other dads in the group, but despite the poor audio, people can't seem to get enough of them.

The music is straight up old time gospel with only a piano played by my mother accompanying them. There is something about the energy in the songs. Nothing in the contemporary christian or traditional gospel genres can touch it. I can't listen to that stuff. For some reason I guess people think that making the simple hymnal songs huge arrangements with a full band would be a good idea, but it's not. I don't even care if the piano isn't in tune. For a Christmas vibe I also threw in a recording of my mother singing the only version of O Holy Night that need be uttered by the human voice. But that's just my opinion. Elvis could almost do it as well, but not quite.

With the last run of 50, the biggest setback was that I was trying to make it look as professional as a desktop production could be and cover on the actual discs themselves is tough to do well. You can print out sticker-style labels, I did, and they are adequate, but I wanted something a little better. I noticed that after being in my truck for a winter that air bubbles formed under the paper.

I was looking into Lightscribe CDs, which would be ideal in my opinion despite it being monchrome, but I don't need a $150 DVD burner. I just need a device that will do the Lightscribe part. Lightscribe is awesome because it uses the laser in a DVD/CD burner and etches a picture into a special coating on top of a DVD or CD. Incredible technology, but discs are somewhat hard to come by and I don't want to invest in a DVD burner when I already have one.

My solution at this point is a fairly new printer from Epson, my favorite inkjet printer company. I just purchased an Epson Stylus Photo R220 inkjet printer today. It is a very inexpensive printer in that it only costs $100. What makes this printer super cool is that it can print covers on CDs and DVDs. And they have blank discs with a pure white cover for just such a thing. The only difference is that most CD printers are much more expensive. The only draw back is that since it is ink, they have to dry for about 24 hours and they aren't waterproof, but it's much better than a silly old sticker. And it's a regular printer too. Most consider it to print photos very well. With 6 colors it should.

So, after a $15 two year warranty and 50 printable CDs, I'm out about $150. I'll get about 75 CD covers/notes printed at a local print house and we'll be in the run for about $225 or so. I should be able to make that back and hopefully make a sizable donation to the church.

So I'll probably get my snow photo for tomorrow and come home to figure out how this thing works. I made CDs the last time it snowed.

New Daddy Diary, Entry#2

I've never considered myself to be tolerant of being urinated on. Throughout my life before parenthood I can honestly not remember it ever happening to me, and I've never felt like I've missed out on anything. RKelly jokes aside, it's just not appealing to have someone else's waste poured on you.

I have the distinct honor of being the first parent to be baptized by our son. The maiden voyage on the U.S.S.P.P happened during his first bath. He was laying on a towel on the sink and both of us had turned our heads for just a moment when my shoulder felt suddenly warm, then moist. How did I react, naturally I put my hand up, changed my shirt and moved on with little more than a chuckle.

Since we have learned the lesson that little boys will urinate upon immediate contact with air. Thus removing the diaper becomes an act of skill. My son has peed on himself already more times than I care to mention. Face, hair, belly, arms, back. He has expressed his displeasure with our choice of window blinds and paint color in a like manner. To save yet another cleaning of the wall, I have elected to have my hand covered in pee more than once.

I'm getting quicker with the new diaper as well, but then you've wasted a diaper. And while diapers aren't comparable to rare coinage in value, I'm too miserly to throw anything away. No, before you ask, I don't put it on anyway, I just hate throwing a slightly damp diaper away. So I resist the urge to let it air dry and throw it in the Diaper Genie anyway. And I sulk.

It's amazing the things you become accustomed to. Being peed on. Cleaning someone else's anus. Being spit up on. Ear bloodying screams. And we're not even four weeks in. Think of what I'll become numb to next week.

How do you spell love in Hollywood? D I V O R C E

Is it me or does there seem to be a lot of divorce in the celebrity world these days? Nick and Jessica have decided something that we as a society decided long ago. Just like us, they can’t stand each other. I just read about Christina Applegate divorcing her lesser known actor husband. I wonder if her being a known entity and him being known only as Christina Applegate’s husband had anything to do with it?

I also just found out that Britney and Kevin’s marriage is in trouble, though Britney is determined to stay unhappily married to spite all the millions and millions of people who knew this wouldn’t work. Also in music divorce news, Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli are divorcing after 24 years of marriage and a kid named Wolfgang. I have to tell you, I could have sworn they were divorced years ago. Hopefully this will get Eddie back into the studio and do something, anything.

But just when you think the whole world has gone crazy and everyone is splitting up, you read about the nuptials of Marilyn Manson. After a four year courtship, Manson recently married his longtime squeeze, Heather Sweet. You may know her as burlesque dancer and fetish model Dita Von Teese. Just remember this, when you start to get depressed and think that all your favorite celeb marriages or all marriages in general are doomed to end in divorce, you can always look to Marilyn Manson to help restore your faith in the blessed union of marriage.

It's the end of an era, Rickey Be Rickey has retired.

It is a sad day for baseball fans; Rickey Henderson has officially retired from baseball. Of course he hasn’t played in the majors in like three or four years, but he was toiling away in the independent leagues because he basically wanted to play ball. He was the greatest leadoff hitter in history, at least when hitting leadoff still meant something, and he is the all time steals leader, when steals used to mean something.

He was also quite the character. Rickey is known to have an ego and like many pro athletes he loved to speak in third person, in fact he was rumored to have left a message on Padres GM Kevin Towers answering machine saying “this is Rickey, calling on behalf of Rickey.” Rickey has been known to talk to himself while playing saying things like, “That’s not how Rickey swings.” Rickey also talks to his bats, “Which one of you bad boys got some hits in you?”

One time it is rumored that Rickey was offered any seat on the team bus because he had "tenure" and Rickey said, “Ten years? What are you talking about? Rickey got 16, 17 years.” Another story that is told is that the Oakland A’s, the team Rickey is most remembered playing for, had found a $1 million accounting “error” in their favor and in tracking down why this happened, they found that Rickey had received a $1 million signing bonus and instead of cashing the check he framed it and hanged it on his wall.

Perhaps my favorite Rickey Be Rickey story is that when he was playing with Seattle, he noticed that a player named John Olerud, who was on the Mets at the time, was playing first base with a batting helmet instead of the usual baseball cap. The reason for this is because as a college player Olerud was hit by a line drive and almost died and since that time he has worn the batting helmet in the field. After Rickey spied Olerud wearing his helmet, he went up to him and noted that he “used to have a teammate in Toronto who did the same thing.” To which Olerud replied, “That was me.” Brilliant Rickey, just brilliant. And isn’t it fitting that on the same day that Rickey “Be Rickey” Henderson has announced his retirement, John Olerud too has retired today. And now you know….the rest of the story.

Everyone is loco because Blizzardo Diablo is coming.

Snow hysteria is here!!! Our area of Kentucky has been targeted by a rogue snow storm and we are expecting anywhere from 1 to 24 inches of snow tomorrow. It is the talk of the county. I have never seen a town so excited and yet terrified of snow. This is a county that will cancel school if it clouds up. Last night the forecast was an inch or so. Today I have heard sixteen different forecasts from people all fired up. Everyone is bouncing around the county seat like they are Daffy Duck. Woo hoo, hoo hoo, woo hoo!!!

Someone said 2-4 inches, someone else said 3-4 with ice, and Yahoo weather says heavy snow with 4-6 inches. With the amount of snow this county averages a year, we are probably getting our one big snow out of the way early this season. I love snow and any time there is a chance for snow, I am for it, whether it is Blizzardo Diablo or an inch of snow. In anticipation of this storm, I am going to the store like every person in the county and buying the “in case you are snowed in” staples: bread, milk, eggs, and in most cases beer. Have a happy snow day!!!

Are things starting to make sense for the Wildcats?

Do I dare dream that last night’s Kentucky game was a “turning point” in the season? Have some of the players who seemed like they had never played organized ball before finally get it? Does a turning point matter if it is against a team that will only win 9 games this year? It was on the road, does that count for something?

I would like to take this time to sarcastically thank the WKU fans for giving us Pat Pat. He acted is if he has never run a team before, at least until the game was fully in hand. His passes were lazy and he is proving to be a defensive liability. I hope that Tubby will bench him and start either Crawford or Bradley over him. When Sparks can’t even be counted on to hit shots unless the game is completely in hand then he does not need to be a starter.

That all being said, I do have to admit that Shagari Alleyne seemed to pick up something. Unfortunately we were playing a team that basically stunk and its tallest player was 6’9. If Alleyne is able to do this against Indiana on Saturday then I will be convinced he is actually useful. It’s easy to play like an SEC championship caliber team against a team that can’t even win the CAA or ACA or wherever they were from. I was very impressed with Joe “Kanye” Crawford, it seems like sitting on the bench lit a fire under his butt and he came out and played a great game with 14 and 7.

Hopefully this game without Rondo will help build the other guards’ confidence and when Rondo is back that same level of play can be reached. If not for the first 5 minutes or so, UK looked pretty good, they haven’t convinced me they are a top 25 team, but unlike UofL, at least they are blowing out the teams they should be blowing out. Let’s hope they keep this up and kill IU and UofL.

New Daddy Diary, Entry #1

As faithful readers of this blog know, I became a first time father on November 14th at? (anyone? anyone?) 7:43PM. In the future for as long as it's interesting and as long as I can remember, I'll chronicle some of the more notable goings on in my recently expanded family.

On Sunday night I stayed home with Aiden while Mrs. Worfner went to church services. (I had gone that morning.) He was asleep virtually the entire time in his "Papasan." Which is basically a metal frame with cloth stretched over it that he lays in. It vibrates, it plays music, it vibrates and plays music simultaneously! Fascinating device.

Rather than pick him up and risk waking him, I carried him Papasan and all into the computer room for some internet time on Hilltopper Haven. After a while that got old, so I picked him up, Papasan and all, and carried him back toward the living room. Stopping to turn the light out when I lost my grip on the right side of the Papasan. it dropped straight to the floor and he tumbled out knocking his sweet, innocent head on the floor.

I'm sure every parent at some point in their child's infancy drops the kid or does something to potentially injur them. At least that's what people have told me to console me. It seems reasonable that unless you're Jerry Rice (great hands) then you might do that. He screamed a paint peeling yell and cried for a solid 12 minutes seemingly without breathing. The thoughts that run through your head at that point are paralyzing. Is he brain damaged? Where's the soft spot? Did his eyes look like that before? What's the red place?

Mrs. Worfner came home at precisely the time Aiden stopped crying. I confessed anyway and then turned down dinner (for a little while anyway) because I honestly thought I'd be sick if I could just calm down enough to puke.

Luckily Aiden's perfectly fine and I've not yet been investigated for body slammed baby syndrome. Stop by next time for:

Aiden's growing like a heatlhy baby
or
Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy, CRACK!!

Thought for the day (provided by a fellow Havenite, Swordfish)
"The diapers say 8-10 pounds, but they don't hold half that much.

Iran and Israel heading for a showdown.

In the next few months, Iraq could be the least of our problems. Things are heating up between Iran and Israel. Iran is continuing their development of a nuclear program claiming that it is only designed for domestic energy. Are we to believe this? Israel certainly isn’t buying it. In fact, the Israelis believe that Iran will have nuclear weapons in the next 6 months or so. Israel has vowed to take action by March 2006 if Iran does not stop this program.

This would not be uncommon for Israel because in 1981 they ordered a strike on a nuclear reactor in Iraq. After the Iranian president called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” Israel is very concerned about a nuclear attack. This whole scenario brings a few questions to mind. What part will the US play in this, if any? Will Bush condone the attack by Israel if it comes to that? Will Bush be able to take any military action? We are spread pretty thin right now. Will the troops fighting in Iraq be safe? Could Iran just drop a nuke on our troops in Iraq and wipe out a large amount of them? Could China or Russia become involved? Russia supposedly just sold Iran a billion dollars worth of missiles. We may find out that we went to the wrong country to stop a madman with weapons of mass destruction.

The BCS needs fixing, here's how.

What a dramatic weekend of college football, or so we hoped. The two biggest games of the weekend featured #1 USC facing UCLA and #2 Texas facing off in the Big 12 championship against Colorado. Because of my extreme hatred of the BCS I was rooting for both UCLA and Colorado. The way I see it, if we could have gotten either Texas or USC to lose, then there would be only one undefeated team. Then there would have been some controversy over who should face the undefeated team in the championship game.

The best case scenario would have been for both of the teams to lose and then there would have been roughly four thousand one loss teams throwing the whole BCS process into a clustermess. Instead both teams somehow were matched up with high school teams instead of college teams and they had no problem winning their respective games this past weekend.

As far as I am concerned, Colorado and UCLA should be made to play each other and this game would decide which team is to play Kentucky for the title of the worst team in college football. My money is on Colorado who has been outscored 100-6 in their last two games. Then Colorado would play UK in a brand new bowl game called the Toilet Bowl sponsored by Roto Rooter.

So after this past weekend #1 USC and #2 Texas will face each other for the college football national championship and we have the game that we want, or at least the game the BCS wants us to want. What most of us want is a playoff system and a chance to watch more than one or two meaningful bowl games in a season. It seems that the BCS committee is the only group of people on the planet who do not see that the whole bowl system is not working. I recently heard NCAA president Miles Brand on WAIA 1600 AM ESPN Radio talk about how an eight game playoff would “degrade” the lesser bowl games.

Degrade the lesser bowl games? The lesser bowl games degrade me as a fan. The lesser bowl games insult me. Why would I, a Julliard trained sports columnist, want to watch Southern Mississippi vs. Arkansas State play in, I’m guessing, the Cereal Bowl? I wouldn’t watch that and neither would you. The only ones interested in that game are Southern Miss and Arkansas State graduates. The lesser bowl games are already degraded.

The only bowl game that is of any importance is the BCS championship game. Only diehard sports fans will watch a bowl game before January 2. I believe that an eight game playoff would make the lesser bowl games just as exciting and interesting as they are now, while making six other bowl games very exciting and more interesting than they have ever been.

You make the Rose Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl part of the playoffs and add three more for the opening rounds like the Cotton Bowl, the Capital One Bowl and the Gator Bowl and now you have the games that would encompass the playoff system. You would then rotate the championship game between the four big bowls just like it is being done now. If other bowls are jealous of the Cotton, Capital One, and Gator Bowls then you could rotate other bowls into the opening rounds of the playoff system.

Here’s how things would work out in a perfect world this season. In the Gator Bowl you have #4 Ohio State vs. #5 Oregon, then in the Capital One Bowl you have #3 Penn State vs. #6 Notre Dame, then in the Cotton Bowl you have #2 Texas vs. #7 Georgia. Now you need to use one of the big four bowl games for an opening round playoff game, so you would always put the #1 team in that game out of respect. This year we would use the Fiesta Bowl and have #1 USC vs. #8 Miami. I would watch those games. And then you get the winners facing off the next week. It’s not rocket science.

You play two games on a Saturday and Sunday or one on a Friday night and three on a Saturday so not to interfere with the NFL. Play the games one or two weeks after the official end of the college football season and then two games the next weekend and end with the BCS championship. This would interest the casual fan who wouldn’t watch but just one bowl game otherwise. I would also imagine this would enable the NCAA and BCS to charge outrageous rates for advertising, not that they care anything about money. No, their main focus is the tradition and integrity of the game as well as academics.

As for the remaining bowl games, the bowl games that do not mean anything to a national audience, you would assign teams that were not good enough to make the playoffs. Those games will still draw interest from super fans, graduates and students of the schools. If the schools in the lesser bowl games look at a post season game as a reward now, then an eight game playoff shouldn’t change that fact.

If the BCS and college presidents will not change the system to an eight team playoff then I propose they just go back to the system they used before all this BCS junk. If there cannot be a legitimate championship game every year then I do not want a sham of a championship game every once in a while. I think a split national championship is just as interesting as a real champion with a playoff. The way I see it, if you have two or three teams that are vying for the championship and those teams play in different games then there would be another game or two that would be interesting.

This is my plan for the BCS and NCAA; I am sure they will take my advice and put it to good use. If I am one thing I am a solutions oriented person and many other sports organizations have utilized my skills. It seems to me that the NCAA and BCS have two choices in front of them. They can adapt and change and move forward or they can regress and move backwards. Either direction would be a major improvement over the way things are now.

Hilton Head: Glad I went no hurry to go back though

I had a conference/retreat at Hilton Head Island this past weekend. If you are into golf it is the place for you. If you are into laying on the beach then it is also for you. If you get bored after a day of doing either one of these things then find another place. It is pretty and unlike any beach I have been to, but it is a somewhat boring besides that. The entire place looks as if it was one giant forest that they have carved all of the stores and hotels into. Sounds cool and it kind of is, but driving down the main strip you see tons of trees and all of the stores are so hidden in them that it is impossible to see which one is which. Also you are right on the ocean yet you can't see it at all until you step out onto the beach. It is a good place to visit, but we won't want to buy a summer home any time soon and since neither of us play golf there is no need to.

Lawsuit against Microsoft over Xbox 360 glitch

I picked up this little nugget on Yahoo! of course. It seems that the Xbox 360 has hit a snag. According to the article linked in the title above, the Xbox 360 tends to overheat and freeze up during gameplay.

Just a little insight into the Xbox and Playstation 3, they are powered by IBM processors. These are the same processors that are currently being used to power Macintosh computers. The reason that they are being used in gaming consoles is because of the super cool Velocity Graphics Engine it uses.

You also may have heard a few months ago that Apple will be switching to Intel processors next year. And why is that, you ask? Well, I'll tell ya.

The current processors being used in Macs create so much heat that Apple couldn't improve their laptop computers. They are running G4 processors at less than 2 Ghz when everyone wants a G5 processor. In fact, the dual G5 processors in the top-o-the-line Power Macs create so much heat that they are liquid cooled.

So it's no wonder that the Xbox 360 is having heat problems, but that is the price they are going to pay in order to try and beat Sony to the punch. What Microsoft should do is figure out a way to make the Xbox 360 backwards compatible with the old Xbox games in addition to fixing the heat issue.

Then they might have a chance against the PS3. Otherwise the 50+ Gig Blue-Ray discs and a library of games that go all the way back to the PS1 will ultimately crown the victor.

28 years ago.....

Twenty-eight years ago in a land far far away. Oh, let's just get to it. It's Bratch's B-day. Happy Birthday.

The definitive rock n' roll replacement rule?

Here is what I've come up with after out lengthy comment discussions under The Cars reuniting post.
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Rock n' Roll Replacement Rule:

A great lead singer and/or great lead guitar player can ONLY be replaced with another fairly large star unless the singer/guitar player leaves the band because of their own personal DEATH. Everyone else in the band is expendable. However, you cannot replace BOTH the lead singer and lead guitarist in any way, shape or form unless you are Deep Purple.
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I think that's pretty good.

Deep Purple is the exception because they've replaced everyone in their band 206 times. I played with them in '86 and I was only 9 years-old and it was for only 3 shows in Mexico. During Live 8 the DJs on XM radio were literally playing a guessing game to see who could figure out who was going to take the stage when Purple went on in Canada.

You can replace drummers and bass players and rock on. (See: The Who, Metallica)

AC/DC replaced a great singer with an unknown, but through death and rocked on.

Lynyrd Skynyrd is living proof of the rule. A plane crash killed the lead singer and lead guitarist. They picked up the singer's brother (with a nearly identical voice) and since they were running a 3 guitar attack anyway, one of the other guys became lead. Another guitarist died later and ultimately they brought in Ricky Medlock from the southern rock band Blackfoot who had some big songs on its own. Granted Skynyrd isn't as big as they were in the 70s, but neither is southern rock in general.

Van Halen replaced David Lee Roth with Sammy Hagar who was a big star on his own and despite my views on the VH3 album, flopped with Gary Sharone who wasn't a big enough star to replace DLR or Hagar.

Guns N Roses is a non issue really because Axl will never do anything on a regular basis, like create new music or tour. So we don't know if he can pull off GNR without Slash.

So what do you think? I think it works pretty well.

Lunch time soaps discussion...

So Piccu, a buddy of ours and myself were watching our usual lunch time soap opera Days of Our Lives today and I asked a question of them after a hated character made a statement.

He said that if he lost his little baby that he didn't think he could live.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Days of Our Lives or DOOL, this character's name is Phillip. He is actually the reincarnation of the original Phillip meaning he's the second actor to take up the role. The only difference being that he's just as annoying as the original Phillip only he's a terrible actor even for soap opera standards. Until DOOL his claim to fame was a Right Guard Power Stripe commercial in which Yankee pitcher Randy Johnson hits him in the gut with a kickball.

Anyway, after he intimated that he would possibly die or perhaps, Lord willing, kill himself if he lost his baby, would we be bad people if we hoped that this would happen? I know it's bad to say, but it is a soap opera and as far as I'm concerned they can kill off pretty much everyone except Mimi as long as it meant this Phillip would somehow die.

If somehow he could kill himself and take that moron Jennifer with him, we'd all appreciate it NBC.

But the good news is that his baby isn't his anyway. In fact, the baby is probably it's own aunt and with any luck, he'll find out and beat himself to death with his own prosthetic leg.

If only Passions could give out some of that poison guacamole they were using a few weeks ago.

The Cars reuniting? Not if Congress can do something about it.

Where is Congress when we really need them? Sivart is all fired up over Congress sticking their nose into the sporting world instead of doing actual work and I have to agree with his sentiments. I do however believe I have found something that Congress needs to look into that may actually do some good for the country. Better yet, it is a chance for Democrats and Republicans to join together in a common cause. Congress needs to stop the reformation of the Cars.

The Cars are reforming and going on tour. Ordinarily I would be excited about this and in fact I was when I first heard about it. I know that Ben Orr is dead and he sang many of the Cars’ songs and played bass, but I figured a replacement could be found for a short tour. Now that I hear more details, I realize that this must be stopped. Apparently not only will Ben Orr or drummer David Robinson not be in the regroup, but Ric Ocasek will not be rejoining either. What??? I know, how can we have the Cars without Ric Ocasek? Well I’ll tell ya. Todd Rundgren is going to join the two original members on this sham of a tour. Who is Todd Rundgren you ask? Exactly.

Rundgren’s fans are now in an uproar because he is doing this. First off, I didn’t know he had any fans and second of course he is doing this, he wants money. I hope that there is not one person in attendance for any of these shows. Even though Ocasek has “rellegedly” given his blessing to this bastardization, I hope guitarist Eliot Easton, keyboardist Greg Hawkes and opportunist Rundgren are stopped by Congress before perpetrating one of the biggest rock n roll swindles on America and perhaps the world.

I like Gregory Peck, but not this much.

I just read this article on Gregory Peck’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame being replaced after it was stolen. Apparently someone was a huge Gregory Peck fan. So huge that the thief took a cement saw and cut the star right out of the sidewalk and all the while never drawing attention. I would like to think that someone would have noticed something. I’m sure this type of thing doesn’t happen every day. This is the fourth star to be stolen. Jimmy Stewart’s, Kirk Douglas’, and Gene Autry’s were stolen during some construction on the sidewalk.

This brings to mind a question. Which star’s star would you like to steal? I bet I know who Merlin would try to steal. Cary Grant and/or Grace Kelly would be my guess. I could go for Mr. Grant’s, but I feel I would go for Humphrey Bogart and to complete the set, perhaps Lauren Bacall. I am not sure how many stars are on the Walk of Fame or all the names, but I can bet that there are quite a few who don’t belong.

In fact, here are a few “stars” that will be given their stars in 2006: Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Ray Romano, Vanna Freaking White, Judge Frickin’ Judy, Motley Crue, and Wink Martindale. After seeing that list, I would almost be more than happy to cement saw Bogie and Bacall out of the ground just to save them from having to share real estate with Judge Judy and Vanna.

Arlen Spector and Congress in General

Arlen Specter thinks the Philadelphia Eagles have treated TO (pronounced, too) unfairly. Yippee. Where do United States senators get off threatening private businesses for their personnel decisions? The Eagles did what they were within their rights to do. The arbitrator agreed. The NFL has no problem with. So Arlen Specter jumps in to throw in his two cents. Is Specter in TO's entourage? Give me a break.

This is yet another example of congress sticking their collective nose where it doesn't belong. Similar to them pressing MLB about its steroid policy. Congress has absolutely no business attempting to force businesses to do what congress wants them to do. I realize we've got nothing else for them to do like debate the Iraq War (constructively for a change, not just mudslinging, camera mongering hypefests) social security, welfare reform, tax reform, hurricane relief, budget balancing, etc. These guys must need more to do.

Its like city wide smoking bans. I hate cigarette smoke. Always have, always will. I particularly hate it when I'm trying to taste a nice meal instead of a stale Doral. But city wide smoking bans are not legal. If they are ever challenged in court, I think they'll be struck down. You can't have government telling privately owned entities what kind of legal activities they can and cannot allow in their places of business.

Government is too big. That's obvious when they have time to tell bars they can't allow a drunk to smoke, when they have time to tell MLB they need stricter steroid policies, and when Arlen Spector has time to threaten the Philly Eagles for their "mistreatment" of TO. So next election, when you hear a candidate talking about how much more government should be doing for you, remember, more government means less freedom and more frivilous activity by government officials.

Rock n Roll Puzzle

Do you like puzzles? Have an encyclopedic knowledge of rock n roll bands? Then this little game is for you. Click the link to see a puzzle that "stupposedly" has 74 bands hidden in it. I have found 13 so far, including Scissor Sisters, Smashing Pumkins, and the Rolling Stones. If you locate just one and submit it you are entered into a drawing for some Alienware so you might as well give it a try. Enjoy!!!

Is the Virgin Mary crying?

Why is the Virgin Mary crying? Is she crying? Some would have you believe she is and many are calling this a miracle. Click the link for the picture and see for yourself. The statue appeared to be crying blood over a week ago and the “tears” were wiped away, but they returned. Is this a hoax? Is this just a natural occurrence? Is this a harbinger of something very bad to come? Or is this a miracle that should be celebrated, especially at this time of the year?

I have to admit that whenever I see things like this I am very skeptical. I have a hard time believing that the Virgin Mary and Jesus are appearing in a grilled cheese sandwich or on the wall of an underpass. This I will admit is a different thing. This is outside a church and it is a statue of the Virgin Mary, not a grilled cheese sandwich in her likeness.

What is this supposed to mean if it is indeed “real?” How is this different from all the other so called miracles such as this that people see every year? Does it mean we are lacking in faith if we don’t believe that this is authentic? I don’t believe it, personally. I think there was a scientific explanation for why the “tears” first appeared and after they were wiped away, someone capitalized on the uproar and found a way to make the “tears” return. That all sounds very simple and believable, but why do I find myself wanting to believe otherwise?

It's official, Tom Cruise is number one.

Is it me or has Tom Cruise taken Michael Jackson’s position as the biggest weirdo/freak in America? Cruise has been going off these last few months beginning with his new sport, couch leaping. He then goes on a huge publicity tour for War of the Worlds (a pretty good movie by the way), but instead of talking about the movie he ends up espousing his beliefs on psychology and psychiatry. While I agree that those are “soft” sciences, we don’t need to hear his uninformed opinions, especially when his belief system is reputed to be handed down from aliens. To top everything off, he took a very hot girl, brainwashed her, and turned her into his very own Debbie Rowe. The carrier of his (or is it?) demon seed.

Well now Cruise has got the medical industry all p@#%es off. He has been bragging about the fact that he has bought a sonogram machine so that he can look at Jr. anytime he wants. The American College of Radiology is concerned about someone, who is obviously a complete moron, operating this type of equipment saying this could possibly cause harm to the baby. Although I would assume that even a monkey could operate this type of equipment.

I can just imagine the scenario. Katie is lying down on an examination table in the grotto of Cruise’s mega mansion. She is of course in restraints, for her and the baby’s protection. Cruise gets the gunk and rubs it on the belly. He then begins looking for Jr. He finds him and just stares for hours. Yep, that’s how he rolls and just think, if Michael Jackson hadn’t moved to Bahrain to become the biggest weirdo/freak in the Middle East, tom would have been number two.

Captain Jack is back, jack!

Good news, good news. Captain Jack Sparrow is back. Yahoo has the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. It looks pretty good. Lots of pirating, sword fighting, and Johnny Depp going nuts. Click the link to check it out. Enjoy!!!